


Puma Concolor Cougar

by AdderTwist



Category: The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, M/M, Mysticism, Resurrection, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdderTwist/pseuds/AdderTwist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a sub-species of cougar, called the ghost cat.<br/>There is a man who took a breath and touched two wires together.<br/>A sea without end, for a moment, the breath of darkness -<br/>And there is a white, white beach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Many From Nine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SandyQuinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyQuinn/gifts).



> This isn't finished, because I intend to write their reunion, but I needed me some fix-it fic before my head exploded and I'm sorry.

There's the sharp, horrible burn, spreading and expanding, and not enough time. There are a lot of things he never said, in case of this and in case of a whole cascade of other reasons, harsh little dangers like this that make him hold his tongue, as he has for years.

He presses his face into Jake Jensen's neck, eyes wet from pain, but he accepts his fate, says goodbye.

For an instant, like the chopper, the bomb he's holding bursts into a cacophony of fire and a sharp roar, and then, blackness; peace.

 

\---------

 

Total oblivion would be a relief, if he could think. Empty tides of nothing, and he is nothing, and the relief is tranquil as he forgets everything.

It doesn't last. That's the surprising part.

 

\---------

 

He doesn't know anything, when he wakes, but a sharp burning, pulling his entire body in a network of searing lines, but that passes. 

He has eyes, and that is a surprise. He opens them; darkness, familiar and cold, is curled around him, but his eyes slowly adjust, picking out details and slowly recalling words for the things he sees, mind hazy and insubstantial as smoke.

Hair.

A blur of skin which - yes, it is his hand. 

Blood.

Slowly, he begins to remember what a body is, how to manoeuvre it, and the sky is making strange pink shadows on the white, white sand when he finally tries to wobble to his feet.  
There is, he notices, a lot of blood; it seems to be mostly dry, and there is something blended to the sand, watching him with inscrutable blue eyes.

"Puma," he manages, hoarsely, and startles at his own voice, the sound shocking against the soft hiss of the ocean. He sways, and nearly falls, and the beast stands slowly, tail flicking. There is blood on its mouth and its paws, and it looks - as if its fur is drying in clumps, as if it's been drenched. Gingerly, he feels the blood on his chest - cuts. Claws, teeth - it was the beast there.

He closes his eyes, shivering, and loses the morning in a blur. When he wakes, the sun is burning directly above them, and the massive feline is crouched, curled around him, heavy and warm, purring a slow, reassuring rhythm.

He licks his lips, tries to pull more from his mind.  
"Cougar," he mumbles, and the cougar startles, stares at him. "My name is Cougar."

This part, actually - this part could be a dream. He's just not sure how to tell. He's mostly certain that he's hurt, but his mind is a hazy blur; touching wires and screaming children and fire, so much fire.

 

Somewhere - somewhere in the world there are more people. There is a bag, blowing down the beach, and so he turns into the wind, starts wobbling his painful way forward, and smiles a broken-glass smile at the hazy sun.

 

\-----------

 

A small resort, nestled on the Mexican beach, as it turns out. Cougar refuses their worried exclamations of his need for hospital, cleans and stitches the cuts with a ponderous, glacial slowness, while worried women and their uncomfortable boyfriends buzz around him with clothes and water. 

Some time later, when night hits, he takes a breath, smells a hint of something oddly familiar, and -

\- it's some kind of soap. Too familiar, it makes him bite his tongue with the sudden painful wrench in his chest. He has his fingers dug into a stranger's arm, inhaling, mind flickering through painfully sharp, important memories, flinching like a burnt hand but unable to look away.

A team - a _family_ , like it or not - sharing supplies, they always did, and there was a particular soap they used and it clings into Cougar's nose and throat until he feels like he's going to fall apart from how hard he's shaking.

"Tequila," he mutters, releasing the man, and pads stiffly to the bar, bargaining with all the charm he can to set up a tab, and when it doesn't work he stares at the bar, mouth a thin line, thinking of everything that's gone wrong, until the bartender takes pity and starts feeding him experimental cocktails.

By the time it hits three a.m., he's trying to explain, with the precision of someone drunk and trying to hide it, why petunias are the manliest flower, but he just can't manage to finish the thought. Instead, he ends up haunted by wildly disjointed thoughts, the alcohol clearing the strange incoherent haziness of his thoughts in tiny leaps and starts.

He falls asleep before he finishes the thought, head pillowed on the bar, still troubled by the hazy, ungraspable recollections.

 

When he wakes, his mouth tastes like chemical ash and burning hair and the sickly-sweet stench of cooking flesh, the whole world rushing back to him in a thundering terror that makes him sink down onto his knees, where he was expecting a hangover.The cluttered roar in his mind fills up with explosives and with the subdued crack of a sniper rifle, the taste of rations.

Aisha's too-sharp, unhappy smile, gleaming knife-bright.

Jensen's bright eyes and the weight of his body pressed to Cougar's side, voice cheerfully lazy and roughened from sleep.

Clay's soft, crackling laugh, shrewd little smirk.

Pooch's voice when he got to fly a wholly unfamiliar plane.

Even - even Roque's confidence, the smile that wrinkled the scar over his eye, the grounding effect he had -

Cougar tries to suck in a breath, lingering visions of blond hair and a crooked, smirking mouth clouding his thoughts, and he knows exactly what he is, what he has done, and what he needs.

 

He needs Jensen.


	2. Catamount

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a ghost gains his solid heart again, and promises are delicately made in the silence between words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe how fast I go from sad to super-schmoop. Wowzers.

Cougar has been dead, it seems, for - for longer than he'd thought.

He had to be dead. He'd set off a nuclear bomb directly against his lap, but -

 - he's trying not to think about that. It feels more like a curse than a miracle, some days, because there's no paper trail for them. It's hell. They're all dead, but that isn't true, it can't be -

The idea of being alone with what he's done, what they've done, keeps Cougar up, blank-faced, and he earns enough money to get away from the ocean, as quickly as he can, cage-fighting, because if a nuke didn't kill him, how could some guy?

 

\-----------------

 

Saltillo is a large enough place, and far enough from the ocean that he won't keep seeing Clay's burning face in his mind's eye, won't keep hearing Max and hearing everything Max has caused until the world is all blazing and screaming, or the hard, bitter line of Aisha's face, her flinty eyes -

The Losers lost. It's what they do, he guesses, and he sets into the city ruthlessly, looking for work. He doesn't bother to sleep, and cats trail along in his wake, yowling and whining and squalling in the trail of his footsteps like the tail of a comet.

 

\--------------------

 

He wants to save up, wants to - go to another place, anywhere that he can hole himself away and pretend that he's quit, instead of losing his team, but the sweet, coaxing call of alcohol sings to him in his insomnia.

 

\------------------------

 

The first three paychecks go to some essentials; alcohol, of course. He gets more clothes - basic, casual, not too restrictive but not likely to catch, just as practical as he can be. He gets a pair of runners, a pair of boots, and even a pair of business shoes; careful thrift-store shopping finds him a suit, and with his steady hand he takes it in a little so that it fits properly about his shoulders.

He buys a suit-bag, stashes his clothes all in that, and still feels so off-balance, so open to the world.

It's a relief when he finds the right sort of hat; familiar, reassuring. He can pretend that he could glance up and see Jensen, when he tilts it down over his eyes, and it doesn't take much longer 'til he's also armed, discreetly.

It's like breathing again. It hurts, but  it hurts less than it could have.

 

\----------------------

 

After a month in Saltillo, the ache of solitude hits him. 

Two months and he tries to seek out someone, anyone, who can help. He doubts that's possible.

 

\---------------------

 

Human company is only going to make him feel worse, without his team, but he deserves that with every fiber in him. Cats trail along with him, as they often do here, since he's taken to feeding them; there's not really any no-pets rules, usually, so he sidles into one of the many bars in the dry, rasping heat here, and he stills as if frozen, his heart thudding in his mouth.

For just a moment, the world stands still, the unhappy hunch of one man's shoulders at the bar too familiar, as some lean, long-haired man in a brown cowboy hat smiles at him. Cougar is hit with such pain that he has to close his eyes, for a moment, biting his lip - 

 

\- and when he opens them, blood drained from his face, at the sound of a stool clattering to the ground… Jensen is staring right back, pale as a ghost, looking punch-drunk and confused.

"You're - dead," Jensen finally manages, and Cougar, dry-mouthed, shakes his head a little.

They stand there, and Cougar feels frozen and very, very distant, because examining what he feels right now would just break him, spill every bit of his sanity across the floor like blood and insides. 

Jensen is the brave one, the first one to move, and move he does; Cougar has to open his arms to catch Jensen into a fierce hug, and he hears a sound too high and hysteric to be a laugh, feels clawing fingers digging bluntly into his back, and the fine, incessant tremble Jensen's started up now.

All he can do is hold on, and bow his head, and beg any god that might exist to let this please, please be real. To let Jensen be alive.

 

"How - I - Cougar -"

"I don't know," Cougar whispers, and can't let go, can't even break apart an inch, clutching Jensen with a desperate sort of strength. "I thought you'd - I thought -"

"No," Jensen stumbles. "I mean I thought I was - but Pooch was there with evac' and just, I just, oh god -"

They might both be crying a little. Cowboy Hat across the other side of the bar is staring at Cougar with an oddly fierce sort of hostility, tinged with what might be fear, and Cougar makes a small, wounded-animal sound, starting to drag Jensen away, needing privacy, needing to try to understand.

 

\----------

 

They make it about halfway to Cougar's hotel, clinging mutely, before Cougar realises just how badly he's shaking, and he doesn't even have to say anything, just lifts his head and looks at Jensen and Jensen knows, nodding sharply, drags him into a shop.

They buy a few bottles that they always both liked, and they retreat, and, under the influence, Cougar whispers quietly of ghost-cats and an ocean that spreads to every corner of the sky, the white sand and the blood, and Jensen pours out a whole boatload of misery and grief.

Clay is gone - Roque too. They never found Aisha. Pooch is alive, but worn thin by their struggle.

Max is dead. Definitely.

"You've slain the dragon, 'n all that shit," Jensen mumbles, drawing patterns in spilled vodka. "Only the dragon was a country and - and you - "

Jensen tears up, and through the fuzz of alcohol and fading regrets, there's only one thing Cougar can think to do.

He leans in, mouth meeting Jensen's, and it's lacking finesse, it's clumsy, pleading. Jensen shudders sharply, just once, pulling back, and then just as Cougar opens his mouth to apologise, he's pulling Cougar onto the bed, holding on, whispering his name and all Cougar can think, in the blur of movement and friction, is 'thank you', over and over again.

 

\-----------------

 

Afterwards, and once sober, hours later when they've tried twice and dozed after both, Jensen speaks.

"What - I mean, this, is this, I -"

Cougar pulls him back into the covers, grunting, and holds onto him until he falls quiet. Jensen understands what that means.

 

\-----------------------

 

They sleep like this, tangled in the too-hot, sticky sheets, holding too tight, and the heat is no good for this but it doesn't matter, it can't. Not when they're alive. Not when they're alive and they've found each other, against all insane odds.

 

\---------------

 

It's actually two days later when they start talking about real things again.

"Where would you actually want to li- to go? I mean, if it could be anywhere. Aaaanywhere, like, your, y'know, town of origin, or where you were raised, or some place you liked -"

Head pillowed on Jensen's leg, watching him tease one of the persistent stray cats with a length of garrotting wire, Cougar feels some bleak knot in his chest ease.

"Up to New Hampshire?" he hazards gingerly, voice low and soft, and Jensen stares, for a moment, like Cougar's punched him in the balls or something and then drags him up off the floor, kissing him giddily.

"You," Jensen murmurs, voice bubbling over with laughter and pleasure, "Are going to be Uncle Cougs."

"Deal," Cougar says, lazily smug, and leans his head against Jensen's.


End file.
